Sur Soi — A Field Guide to Becoming

Volume I in the La Femme Society Library. A field guide to becoming yourself — the rituals, the standards, the small refusals that change a life. Ten chapters across three parts: the body, the face, and the spirit.

What is inside

Ten chapters, each on a single subject, each built on the research that supports it. Part I — Le Corps: sleep, the table, movement, scent. Part II — Le Visage: the face (an honest chapter on what actually works), dressing. Part III — L'Esprit: money, work, friendship, and the practice of being alone well.

Each chapter contains a small number of things that have earned their place in a life — written editorially, cited where the research is settled, honest where it is not. A woman cannot dress, eat, or sleep her way into self-respect on a foundation of nonsense.

Read the first chapter first

The opening of Sur Soi — Chapter I, La Cure de Minuit, on sleep — is available as a complimentary PDF. Six pages, typeset to the standard of the full volume, sent to your inbox in exchange for an email address. If you have not already received it, the form on the homepage will deliver it.

It is the same chapter, in the same typography, on the same paper feel. If the excerpt does not earn the rest of the volume, the rest of the volume is not for you.

Form

Approximately ninety pages. Set in Italiana, Instrument Serif, Crimson Pro, and Work Sans, on cream paper stock. Citations at the back. Delivered as a high-resolution PDF within minutes of purchase. Print at home or read on screen — the typography holds either way.

— For the woman who is becoming, and is in no hurry. —